New professors bring a variety of experience, perspectives to campus Washington & Jefferson College welcomes several new professors to campus this fall. They bring a wealth of academic knowledge and real world experience across a variety of disciplines to share with their students. David Ryan Bunting ’07 joins Washington & Jefferson College as an instructor in the Department of Education. He is currently a doctoral candidate at Duquesne University and earned a master’s in education from Christian Brothers University and a B.A. in child development/education from W&J. His research interests include the use of restorative justice practices in creating sustainability among a school district, a community, and a college. Bunting has taught for eight years at the fifth and sixth grade levels at Washington Park Elementary and level one at Central Christian School. He has been an adjunct professor at W&J for seven years. Cory Christenson joins Washington & Jefferson College as an assistant professor in the Department of Physics. Christenson earned a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Arizona and a B.A. in physics from Gustavus Adolphus College. His research interests are in organic polymers and dyes for optics-based technologies, such as solar cells, holography, and data storage. He was most recently a visiting professor at Case Western Reserve University for three years and mentored numerous undergraduates in research projects. Melissa Cook ’90 joins Washington & Jefferson College as an associate professor in the Department of Communications. Cook earned a Ph.D. in rhetoric from Duquesne University, a master’s of public administration from the University of Pittsburgh, and a B.A. from Washington 5
FALL 2016 MAGAZINE
& Jefferson College. Cook most recently served as an associate professor and chair of the Department of Communication at St. Vincent College, as well as the director of St. Vincent’s Fred Rogers Scholars Program. She has also served as the executive director of the Brookwood Adult Day Care Center in Venetia, Pa., and the director of communication and institutional advancement for the Sisters of St. Francis of Millvale in Pittsburgh. Her research interests include communication ethics as they apply to organizations, communities, families, and personal relationships; presidential campaign rhetoric; rhetoric and philosophy of marketing and public
relations; and communication across the curriculum pedagogy and best practices. In collaboration with Annette Holba, Cook edited the book “Philosophies of Communication: Implications for Everyday Experience.” She previously taught as an adjunct professor in W&J’s Theatre and Communications Department from 1998 to 2004. Anudeep Gill joins Washington & Jefferson College as an instructor in the Department of Economics. She earned a master’s degree from SUNY Binghamton and a B.A. from Whitman College. She has defended her doctoral dissertation at the University of South Carolina. Her research interests include labor economics and applied microeconomics. She was a graduate instructor in economics for two years and a teaching assistant for undergraduate and graduate economics courses at the University of South Carolina.
W&J honors national leaders Washington & Jefferson College awarded four national leaders with honorary degrees during the College’s 217th commencement ceremony. Congressman John Lewis, a nationally recognized leader during the Civil Rights Movement, received an honorary Doctor of Laws. On March 7, 1965, he helped lead more than 600 peaceful protestors across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., in what later became known as Bloody Sunday. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Medal of Freedom and a John F. Kennedy “Profile in Courage Award” for Lifetime Achievement. Lewis has served as a U.S. Representative for Georgia’s 5th congressional district since 1987. Jean Berko Gleason, Ph.D., a professor emerita in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Boston University, received an honorary Doctor of Science. She is best known for her breakthrough work on language acquisition in children and is the inventor of the Wug Test, which uses nonsense words to study children’s understanding of simple language rules. Imam Khalid Latif, the executive director and chaplain of the Islamic Center at New York University, received an honorary Doctor of Divinity. Latif became the youngest